Publisher: Oblivion Publishing
ISBN: 9780578660790
The House that Fell from the Sky is difficult to review, but I thank Netgalley and the
publisher for making it available to me for an honest opinion.
I enjoyed the story and loved the
imagination put into it. The “House” is really much more than a house. I don’t
understand the title at all, nor its characters suggesting it is a house. It
appears as a physical, but paranormal, structure covering city blocks and at
least seven stories high. Plus, the powers of the “House” go beyond just the
physical structure alone and affect anybody close to it. The descriptions of
the horror within it are vivid leaving little more to imagine; they are
outright, unbelievably frightening. The four main characters (Scarlett, Tommy,
Jackson, and Hannah), each with mental flaws or inhibitors that prevent them
from moving on in life successfully fit the story well for each has a major
disadvantage in facing the horror of the “House” that demands they work
together to do so. A fifth character
Vincent, a magician from the past who has an unknown, until the end, connection
to them helps coordinate the teamwork and direction through the house.
I enjoy horror and began liking
the detailed descriptions of the rooms within. However, the repetitive detail for
each and every room became annoyingly tiresome to wade through. Hey, I get it.
The place is scary, but I really didn’t care after the first four times to know
what every crook and cranny looked like. Likewise, the “monsters” or occupants
or spirits or whatever descripting are necessary, but later when still more ghouls
were introduced, the same descriptions again with minor variances became boring.
It was like going through a haunted house at a fair where every so many feet a
figure pops out that isn’t much different – it’s the popping out that is scary.
Yet, I must emphasize that the initial descriptions were shockingly memorable
and provided a clear visual of the horror.
It took 15% to get to any horror.
Until then, the four main characters and a few others were the story and that
wasn’t well done. Much too much dialogue between the characters and little
cohesive foundation. It took me a while to realize that Todd was Chief Briggs
and he was Jackson’s father. Plus, Hannah was sort of a “left-town” person with
very little description of who she was and details of why. I feel character
building should have been done more effectively. This brings me to the “BEFORE”
chapters which to me were no more than the author realizing that the initial character
introductions were already too long, but the content in those chapters still
needed to be told. They were of no real value and became page fillers. So, my
summary of character building is that it was overloaded with chit-chat between
young adults that acted like teens and from the dialogues I was being asked to
form my own opinions instead of the author presenting meaningful meat and
potatoes.
Despite struggling through the
things that annoyed me, I couldn’t put this book down. The constant horror,
twists and turns, and need to continue were gripping. Eventually, the entire
picture became clear and the end came, not entirely as expected. However, it
was presented effectively and was memorable.
I find that there were many 5-Star
parts of this novel, but just enough 3-Star annoyances to make this an overall
4-Star performance. I look forward to improvements in this author’s future
books to solidly define him as a great horror writer.
Reviewer: Rich
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